Outlaw Derek (11 page)

“Yes, I do.” She could feel his other hand at the back of her head, his fingers moving in her hair caressingly, and lifted her chin to allow him more room to explore as his lips trailed down her throat. Eyes half-closed, she was mindlessly basking in the radiant fire of his body and her own. It was so warm.
He
was so warm and hard, and she needed him so badly. She couldn’t catch her breath and didn’t care, didn’t care about anything but these wonderful feelings.

“Stop me,” he whispered tensely against her throat. “For your sake—stop me.”

“Not even for my sake,” she murmured, wondering why he would say something like that.
Why on earth would she want to stop him? She felt so alive, so wonderfully alive, and so much a woman. For the first time in her adult life, she truly felt like a woman. And she could feel the strength inside herself for the first time, a tempered steel core that had lain hidden beneath fears this explosion had ripped away; it was a strength she hadn’t imagined herself capable of, and she gloried in the knowledge that it existed within her.

Wonderingly, she repeated, “Not even for my sake. Make love to me, Derek.” And there was no shock left in the astonishing freedom she felt in that moment.

Even then, Derek might have been able to stop himself, because he knew what he stood to lose in the recklessness of his need and her response. And if Shannon had shown one instant’s hesitation, one flicker of uncertainty, it would have been enough to give him the strength he needed. But more than her words told him she wouldn’t hesitate. Her body told him. She was moving
restlessly against him, unconsciously seeking, and her trembling hands stroked his back, tried to draw him closer. And he couldn’t fight them both.

He tried.
Dear God, he tried
. His head lifted, his body stiffening with the fierce effort to take that first step back away from her. But Shannon’s arms slipped from around his waist and her hands fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and when he felt her seeking touch, felt her lips as she pressed them to his chest, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it.

“Shannon …” It was little more than a breath of sound. He framed her face in his hands and kissed her with all the gentle restraint he could manage, making a silent promise to her and to himself that this wouldn’t be a mistake. That he wouldn’t let this be a mistake. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her up the steps and to the side of the bed.

She felt right in his arms, just as she had that first night, and he was reluctant to let her go
enough to set her on her feet by the bed. He couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t stop gazing into the dark amber fire of her eyes. She was so beautiful it almost stopped his heart.

Shannon was hardly aware they’d moved. She was vaguely conscious of the bed behind her, but could only gaze up at his taut, handsome face and marvel at her own feelings. These strange new feelings that had brought her alive. “I want you,” she said wonderingly.

Derek caught his breath and went still for a moment, then rapidly discarded his shirt and kicked off the soft-soled moccasins he always wore. “I’m glad,” he said with rough-edged gentleness. “Because I want you, too, honey.”

Shannon’s gaze went over his body, curiously half-primitive clad only in jeans, and the wonder in her grew. He was so beautiful, so stunningly male. So perfect. The thick mat of hair on his broad chest was gold-tipped, both soft and rough to her touch, arrowing down his hard stomach and disappearing beneath the waistband
of his jeans. Muscles rippled with every movement, catching the light, and the sheer power of him was a palpable force that stirred her senses wildly.

And the warmth of him … the wonderful, seductive warmth of him. She went into his arms as though drawn by a lodestar, wanting him, needing him and the warmth he’d created in them both. Impatient, she wanted the barriers gone, wanted to feel him against her. She lifted her face to meet the heat of his kiss, barely able to hold herself away from him long enough to allow him the room to unfasten her silken pajama top. She shrugged out of the top and instantly pressed against him, gasping at the intimate contact as the tips of her breasts turned to fire, seduced by her own body’s response to the hardness of his. Her hands found the ridged firmness of his stomach, and she felt muscles contract beneath her touch.

“Nobody told me,” she said shakily as he
lifted his head and looked down at her with his dark, hot eyes. “Nobody told me it felt like this.”

Derek wanted to tell her that, in his experience, it didn’t feel like this. Not like this. Nothing had ever felt like this. For the first time, he truly understood why Kelsey, one of the strongest men he’d ever known, had all but come apart in the turbulence of love and need. Derek knew what it felt like now, and he wondered on some distant level of his mind if he would be able to survive this intact. Something shuddered inside him. He didn’t think he would.

He had already lost something, given it to her. Or perhaps she had stolen it, taken it from him in her innocent need. It was gone, hers, and he’d never get it back again.

“Derek—?”

He realized he’d gone very still, and wondered if the sudden ferocity he felt showed on his face. His eyes searched her lovely, awakened face, gazed in fascination at the pulse beating rapidly in her throat, and then lowered to the pale gold
mounds of her breasts. “You’re beautiful, Shannon,” he murmured tautly. “Lord, you’re so beautiful.” His hands found the waistband of her pajama bottoms, and he began drawing them downward as he bent his head and kissed her shoulder.

One of Shannon’s hands left his stomach, capturing his left wrist with jerky quickness as she caught her breath suddenly and stiffened.

Derek raised his head and looked into amber eyes that skittered nervously away from his intent gaze for the first time. And he knew, even before the whispered words escaped her.

“The light … turn it off, please, Derek. I don’t want you to see—the accident … there were operations, and I don’t want you to see.” Her eyes were changing, darkening, a new kind of awareness bringing a sanity that was cold and afraid.

The lamplight from the lower level was barely enough to illuminate the bed and them. Barely enough. But enough for her to be afraid of what
he’d see. Derek knew that it could end right here. She could stop him now, and would, given only a moment in his own hesitation to think. But if it ended here and now, he knew it would be over for good. Because Shannon would always remember the moment it ended. And why it ended.

“The light,” she whispered, a hint of desperation in her unsteady voice. “Derek, the light—”

“Shhh.” He kept his hands still at her waist while his lips feathered over her face, down her throat. He explored the flushed curves of her breasts with gentle hunger, hearing the kittenlike sound she made in the back of her throat, and felt both her hands lift to his neck as he dropped slowly to one knee. The sensitive flesh of her stomach quivered beneath his lips, and this time there was no resistance when he slid the pajamas down over her curved hips and slender legs.

Still, he felt her stiffen, felt the sudden fearful, waiting tension in her as the scars became visible to him. He hurt when he saw the pain she had endured, saw what had been done to her. One
scar curved over her hip joint, the wide, pale mark of an incision to repair inner damage. A second scar tracked down her upper thigh, several inches long and jagged. And there were other, fainter marks, wounds made by glass or metal, injuries that had marked a soul as well as a body.

Derek touched the scars with infinite gentleness, tracing each one with a sensitive finger and then his lips. He felt as well as heard the sob that caught at her as tension drained away, and her body seemed to curve briefly over his in a posture that was grateful and curiously protective.

“Ugly,” she whispered. “So ugly.”

“No.” He rose slowly back to his feet, one hand stroking her hip with a soft touch. He could taste the salt of her tears when he kissed her, and his free hand drew her close. “Not ugly. Just a part of you, honey. And you’re beautiful.”

Shannon caught her breath when he lifted her and placed her in the center of the turned-down bed. She lay gazing up at him as he discarded
what remained of his clothing, and some distant part of her wondered if this could possibly be happening. She looked at him, powerful and starkly masculine, his body painted a dark bronze by the lamplight. She should have been afraid of so much power, so much perfect beauty—and then she saw the scar on his upper thigh, a jagged, twisting mark. A new kind of shock rippled through her. Not perfect. Scarred like her.

Derek came down on the bed beside her, taking her hand and guiding it to touch the scar he bore. “We all have scars, honey,” he said softly, roughly. “Inside or out—or both. We all have scars.”

She could feel the puckered flesh beneath her fingers, familiar to her touch because her scars felt like that, and she looked at him wonderingly. In that moment, she had never felt so close to another human being. And then she became aware of the hardness of his body as he half leaned over her, and she forgot about scars. Her
hands lifted, one touching his powerful chest and the other sliding up his spine, and her mouth responded instantly, wildly, to the touch of his.

She was burning out of control, caught up in something that left her dizzy and breathless and needing. There was no time to think, and the time for questioning these turbulent new needs was long in the past. She barely heard the hungry sound that escaped her when his lips left hers to burn a trail down her throat. Tension was winding inside her like a spring, tighter and tighter.

His own need was coiling inside him, and Derek was jarred by the unfamiliar possessiveness of that inner beast. He watched his hands at her breasts, large and bronzed against her pale golden flesh, watched her rosy nipples harden with every teasing stroke of his fingers. His gaze flicked up to her face, flushed and awakened, the tender lips faintly swollen from his passion and the big amber eyes heavy-lidded with desire. And when the realization and acceptance of it
flashed through his mind with brilliant clarity, a broken sound escaped from somewhere deep inside him and he buried his face between her breasts.

His. She was his. His heart, his soul, the other half of him. He had known he loved her, but he hadn’t known until that moment just how terribly vital she was to his very existence.

“Derek.”

He kept his gaze fixed on her body even as he lifted his head, unwilling to let her see what he knew was blazing out of him through his eyes. If his own violent emotions scared the hell out of him, what would they do to her? He couldn’t risk it. The gamble he was already taking by making love to her now was dangerous enough.

He concentrated on her breasts again, tasting her soft skin, gliding his tongue slowly around a hardened bud that begged mutely for a closer caress. He heard her whimper when his mouth closed at last over her nipple, and the choked little cry was the most seductive sound he’d ever
heard. He could feel his own body respond wildly, feel the pounding pulse of his desire throb harder, stronger, until it seemed there was nothing left of him but that madly escalating need.

It was all he could do to hang on to some kind of control, and it took every shred of strength he could command to hold back when he wanted to bury himself in her, possess her until they were fused, bonded, until she’d never be rid of him. Only the knowledge that she was a virgin, a knowledge that was as sure as his own love, kept him in control. And it was because he loved her that he felt the weight of that responsibility so strongly; if she were hurt or frightened in this first vital joining, she could be forever beyond his reach.

However she felt about him in the morning, Derek wanted her memories of tonight to hold nothing but pleasure.

His mouth moved from one breast to the other, and his hand slid down her side, pausing for a moment to gently rub the scarred hip she was no
longer aware of. He felt the slender tautness of her thigh, the skin like silk, and eased his hand to the inside, just above her knees. Her legs were pressed together, and he could feel the instinctive resistance in tightening muscles. But he was patient, slow, aware that her breath was coming faster and that her body’s needs were overcoming instinct.

Shannon felt his touch easing her legs apart, and something panicky stirred in her mind. She caught her breath to voice some protest, but then her pounding heart seemed to lodge in her throat and block the words before they could emerge. She was hot, burning, and her body didn’t want to be still, couldn’t be still. His mouth on her breasts was feeding the fire, the swirling tongue maddening, and the heat spread in waves until she thought she’d burst into flames.

Her nails dug unconsciously into his back, and she distantly heard a ragged moan, only vaguely aware that the sound came from her, that her
legs were parting for him, obeying his insistent touch. That caressing hand was moving closer, closer, trailing more fire in its wake. She felt an awful, empty ache, and some new instinct told her he could make the ache go away, fill the emptiness. And then she caught her breath again as his gentle fingers settled over the pulsing ache, some animal sound fighting to escape her taut throat.

“Derek!” The animal sound, his name torn from her in a surge of violent need.

“So soft and warm,” he murmured hoarsely against her breast, the vibration of his words a new caress. His fingers probed her softness slowly and thoroughly, a building caress that stole her breath and shocked her senses, until she was trembling, until another ragged moan escaped her and her body moved in restless urgency to his touch. “You’re so beautiful you’re driving me out of my mind.”

Shannon thought she was going out of her mind, and her body was a disconnected thing
filled with heat and need and a tension spiraling out of control. She was throbbing in a quickening rhythm, every inch of her pulsing in a single, giant heartbeat of desire. She felt the coiling tension wind tighter, felt all her senses rushing toward some distant explosion, and she wanted the detonation to swallow her up, engulf her, vanquish her.